1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an associated system for modifying a current content assigned to a warning message (or alarm message—or alarm) capable of being generated in an aircraft cockpit by a monitoring system known as flight warning system (or alarm calculator).
2. Discussion of the Background
In an aircraft cockpit, the flight warning system is an on-board system intended to forewarn the crew members of an abnormal situation concerning a monitored airplane system.
The monitored systems may include detectors or calculators relating, for example, to the engines, to the fuel tanks or to the landing gear.
Diverse flight warning systems are used in modern airline aircraft. In the Airbus A320 and A330/A340 family, for example, the warning system is a unit that can be replaced on-line (LRU for “Line-Replaceable Unit”) known as “Flight Warning Computer” (flight warning computer). In the A380 and A400M family, the warning system is a software program known as “Flight Warning Application” (flight warning application), executed by modules that can be replaced on-line (LRM for “Line-Replaceable Module”), which integrate the integrated modular avionic technology (IMA: “Integrated Modular Avionics”).
The flight warning system receives information originating from the monitored systems, and continuously determines whether an alarm must be tripped.
It communicates with the pilots by means of acoustic emissions, illumination of indicator lights and displays on screens.
In the architecture of the Airbus airplanes, these screens are ECAM screens (the acronym for “Electronic Centralized Aircraft Monitor” or centralized electronic monitoring, also known as EICAS for “Engine Indication and Crew Alerting System” in certain architectures). The ECAM is an assembly of visual and acoustic information and control systems in the all-screens instrument panel environment (“glass cockpit”) of an aircraft.
When the flight warning system detects alarm-generation conditions, it causes the display of visual messages (text or symbolic) on these screens, the emission of acoustic signals or the illumination of indicator lights, all of these elements together constituting a warning message.
The content of the warning message supplies information items to the crew concerning the detected abnormal situation, and advises the crew of the action to be taken in response to this detection of an abnormal situation.
A list of warning conditions and default contents of warning messages associated with these warning conditions is recorded as the default setting during design of the flight warning system of the airplane.
These default contents of the warning messages were defined for the default configuration of the monitored system in question or of the monitored systems in question.
Now, a monitored system can be present on board the aircraft in different configurations, which vary from one airplane to another and vary in the course of the life of the airplane.
These different configurations are defined, for example, by the version of an on-board software program that controls the monitored system, by the characteristics of the physical equipment items constituting the monitored system or by the presence of a temporary anomaly of the monitored system, and such a change of configuration of a monitored system may or may not be temporary.
The action to be taken by the crew members in response to an abnormal situation depends in practice on the configuration of the monitored system on board the aircraft in question. It is therefore necessary to communicate information adapted to this configuration to the crew.
The solution implemented heretofore to communicate such information effectively to the crew in the detected abnormal situation, taking into account the precise configuration of the monitored system or systems on board the aircraft, is based on the use of portable on-board documentation.
This solution comprises the following steps, which are applicable to all abnormal situations for which the message to be received by the crew is not the default message:                a maintenance agent introduces, into the flight warning system, an information item indicating to the flight warning system that the content of the default visual message associated with the abnormal situation is obsolete,        the crew is provided, before boarding, with portable documentation containing, among other elements, the replacement information, adapted to the configuration of the monitored system present on board the aircraft,        in case of detection of the abnormal situation, a message is displayed on the ECAM screen to indicating the presence of a replacement information item in the portable on-board documentation, the default message associated with the abnormal situation not being displayed.        
This solution is described in European Patent 0780746 and the equivalent U.S. Pat. No. 5,838,261.
The portable documentation is generally provided in printed form. It is known under the acronyms of QRH (“Quick Reference Handbook”, or rapid reference booklet) or of FCOM (“Flight Crew Operating Manual”, or operating manual for the crew).
It is updated regularly for each type of airplane in its operating phase, taking into account the particular features of the monitored systems of the type in question.
Now, numerous airplanes corresponding to a given airplane model are used by the airline companies, and in practice they have extremely varied sets of configurations of monitored systems.
The number of existing combinations of configurations of monitored systems increases very rapidly in the months following the start of commercialization of a new aircraft model.
Management and updating of numerous portable documentations according to the airplanes, to the evolution of the configurations of the different monitored systems from one airplane to another and, for one and the same airplane, according to this evolution in the course of time, represent a considerable workload and therefore a high cost.